Has Free Press Lost Its Mind?

The Germans have a word called Schadenfreude, which roughly translates into taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. It’s the feeling most of us had when we read about Paris Hilton’s latest arrest.

Usually you feel a little guilty, but sometimes life brings an example that’s so crazy it becomes almost funny. In other words, you get Free Press. This is the Professional Left group founded by the avowed socialist Robert McChesney around the time he called the United States “by any honest account, the leading terrorist institution in the world today.”

This week, Free Press became so hysterical as to be almost unhinged, acting like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining. The organization launched a full-throated “shock and awe” broadside to get the FCC to begin regulating “neutrality” over the Internet. Along with fellow liberal travelers at Public Knowledge, Free Press posted scathing attacks suggesting that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski had become a tool of corporate interests and a “toothless bureaucrat.”

As enjoyable as it is to watch these guys work themselves into a frenzy on Net neutrality, it’s even more fun to admire the irony: Free Press is pushing exactly the kind of Executive Branch power-grab that liberals scorned loudly during the Bush years!

Earlier this year in a suit involving the FCC and Comcast, a federal appeals court tossed out the legal basis by which the FCC had tried to regulate broadband networks. That decision was authored by David Tatel, a Clinton appointee with impeccable liberal credentials.

So despite a clear warning from the courts that there is no legal basis to defend a new power grab, Free Press wants the FCC to charge ahead and regulate the Internet anyway. The last person who showed this kind of a disregard for consequences was General Pickett on the third day at Gettysburg.

If there’s anything heartening about this whole amusing scenario, it’s that even the Obama Administration appears to be having second thoughts about regulating Internet neutrality. Over the summer, they heard stern warnings from union supporters in the communications industry concerned about losing their jobs if the FCC began regulating.

For a President already reeling from high unemployment, the prospect of self-inflicted job losses is something he surely can do without.